


linguistics

by preromantics



Category: Star Trek 2009
Genre: F/M, Gen, Gen Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-21
Updated: 2010-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-10 17:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the comment_fic prompt: Spock/Uhura, how they first met at Starfleet</p>
            </blockquote>





	linguistics

Uhura goes to the Small-Planet Division language seminar although she is the youngest cadet there. It's set up in round-table groups of five to seven people, most of them of academic background. They all eat together, ordering dishes from a wide banquet menu, something to suit the appetite of each person presented.

Uhura doesn't talk much while they eat before the presentation, although half of her table is very talkative, enthusiastically switching between languages in a way that Uhura eventually wants to master. She feels a little lost among everyone, not being able to take charge of a conversation like she usually prefers within a classroom setting. She likes to prove how much she knows, likes to sometimes (politely) throw it in the face of a lot of the men around her with thick necks and muscled arms that she can and will prove that she is better.

One other member of her table group is not as easily swayed into conversation, although through the course of the lunch many officers and professors stop by, to the best of Uhura's combined language and eavesdropping skills, congratulate him on a multitude of achievements in science, linguistics, and research. He is decidedly Vulcan, one of the languages Uhura has excelled in since starting her linguistics background, but had never had the chance to put into practice outside of simulators.

It's not until the stage starts being set up for the introduction to the seminar that Uhura takes the seat vacated to his left, sliding over from her own.

"Hi," she says, at the last minute going for the general federation greeting, rather than the Vulcan she had repeated several times in her head while trying to decide if she should switch chairs.

He doesn't say anything at first, but nods at her when she fully introduces herself, and through the course of the seminar leans over to comment on various things, close enough to her ear to make little warm shivers run down her spine in a way she's almost embarrassed about, not even knowing his name or his position within Starfleet.

After the hours-long seminar, when Uhura is steadily trying not to lean into his voice in her ear -- his little observations on case use and clitics and his astute and sometimes corrective of the seminar speaker's ideas on etymology -- he asks her to speak afterwards, and they walk down to one of Uhura's new favorite cafe's by the bay, talking way past both Uhura's study time and her sleeping time. She learns more than she has in a single class on a variety of topics and not enough about the man himself, Spock, but she walks out of the cafe at half-past three in the morning and sort of floats back to her bed.

(Gaila has many comments about her late return in the morning, but it's the day the new semester starts, and Uhura is going to be late to her newest advanced Synthetic Language class, even if she did want to tell Gaila about Spock.)

She gets to class and settles next to a girl she remembers from a previous class, sharing a smile with her, and taking a sip from the coffee she grabbed from the replicator in the dorm commons, and -- very nearly missing her mouth when Spock, Spock-from-last-night, walks in the class and takes his position at the podium, not looking at her until after he's introduced himself as the replacement professor for the term.


End file.
